Naginata: Sparring For The One
by Elemental of Wind
Summary: Neal hopes to win over Yuki by learning about the Yamani, and enlists Kel for help. Kel, who still has a crush on him, helps him nonetheless, teaching him all about the Yamani and their culture. But during Kel's teachings, Neal finds himself drawn less an


Nagainata

Disclaimer: I do not own Kel or Neal or any of Tamora Pierce's characters.

Dedication: To all Kel/Neal fans.

Chapter #1

"Kel. Kel. KEL. KEL!!!"

Kel frowned, fighting desperately to keep her focus. Her short, chin-length brown-blond hair blew in the summer wind coming through the open window. The ledge of that particular window was lined up with little sparrows, quietly watching her, button black eyes inspecting her every slow, calm breath. She was kneeling on the floor of her room, palms resting on her thighs. Raoul's room, which was connected to her own by plain wooden door on the left hand wall, was empty, it's owner in a meeting. She was meditating, her eyes shut and trying to ignore all distractions.

_I am stone_, she thought to herself._ I am-_

Neal burst in the door. His hair was sticking up at odd angles looking as though he had run his fingers through his hair numerous times, and his face showed exasperation.

"Kel, I've been knocking for at LEAST twenty minutes and...what are you _doing?" _he demanded. He had been debating whether to talk to her all morning, and when he finally decided to, she didn't answer her door. So he came in, and she was _sitting, ON THE FLOOR_, looking as though she was trying to drown him out.

Kel sighed, and stood up. "I _was _meditating." She stated, emphasising the past tense.

Neal rolled his eyes. Kel tried to stifle a laugh. He looked so eager to pop out his story, that his face was red.

"Anyway," he begged. "I need your help!"

Kel grinned. "What do you say?"

Instead of coming out with one of his normal sharp retorts, he burst out "PLEASE!" His tone was extremely frustrated. "I need you you-"

"...please..." Kel inserted, receiving a glare from Neal.

"Could you..._please..._ help me learn some Yamani stuff? I mean, since you spent six years in the islands, and you're basically the only one that knows ANY you teach me?"

Kel looked him over. "And why is this, exactly?" She questioned him, causing him to flush. "Do you want to impress a certain Yamani noblewoman? By the name of...say...Yuki?"

Neal's flush grew darker. "Kel..." he growled warningly.

Kel grinned. "Okay, okay. What do you want to know?"

Neal's face went blank; it was obvious he hadn't thought that far ahead. This only added to Kel's amusement. "Well," she said, going over to her glaive, in the process turning her back away from Neal so he wouldn't see her grin, and taking it off its hooks on the wall. She turned, saying "I can start you off on the names of the basic glaive commands."

Neal walked over to her bed, sat down on the edge, and drawled: "And what good is THAT going to do me?"

Two minutes and Kel already felt like cuffing Neal around the head. She sighed inwardly. "Yuki does glaive practice, or _Naginata_, right?" Neal looked confusedly at the long, six foot teak staff, topped with a seven-inch blade. "She does?"

Kel rolled her eyes. Score one for Neal the observant. Yuki and the other Yamani, along with herself, her mother, and Queen Thayet, practiced in the courtyards almost every day in the summer.

"Noblewomen aren't as delicate as they seem. Besides, don't you think it would look good if she did a move and you could tell her what it was?"

Neal frowned for a minute, obviously picturing this, then slowly grinned. "Now, do I have to know all these things by memory?" he questioned, his voice aggravatingly drawl.

_This is going to be a looooong lesson._ Kel groaned inwardly, her face Yamani blank.

"Unless you want to refer to a dictionary every time you want to show off, yes, you do."

She did a couple warm ups, swinging the glaive in a smooth up and down motion. The stretch easily fell into a pattern. It moved over her head and swished down in an ark, the blade stopping a few inches off the ground. Finally, when Neal began to get impatient, Kel stopped, and put the glaive in a position so the iron-shod butt was facing front, and the blade itself was behind her. One of the eagerly watching sparrows cocked its head questioningly.

"All right, Neal. This position is called _waki kamai._"

One of Neal's eyebrows arched. "Why is it called that? Wacky cam-I? Is it because it's weird, because the glaive's backwards?"

Kel bit back a laugh. "_Da me, da me!" _She informed him, trying to keep her face straight.

Neal bristled. "I am NOT a dummy! I'm new to this stuff, you know!" It was obvious that having Alanna the Lioness, famed for her firecracker temper, as a knight mistress did nothing for Neal's own sharp tongue.

Kel couldn't hold it in anymore. She burst out in a fit of giggles. "No!" she finally gasped, when Neal stared at her incredulously. "_Da me_...it's Yamani for 'that's wrong!'"

"Oh."

Desperately trying not to laugh at her friend, Kel moved into another position. "This is _hasso._"

Neal raised his eyebrows. "Am I supposed to be understanding this?" he questioned her.

Kel felt like punching him. "Okay, we'll start at the very beginning then." She replied.

Walking over to the wall, she put her glaive back on the hooks. Picking up a large cloth bag on the way, she walked back to Neal. Pointing at her shin, she said, "This is my _sune._" She waited for a moment for Neal to interrupt. When he didn't, she continued. "These are my _kote."_ She added, pointing at her hands. "_Doe_ is stomach in Yamani." She winced, knowing what was coming.

"Dough? Did they name it that because stomachs are doughy?"

"**No**, Neal." She was beginning to get a bit exasperated. "The _men _is the head, and when you flip the glaive over in _waki kamai_, and hit someone with the butt end, the Yamani call that a punch, or a _tsuki_."

Neal opened his mouth, a habit of which all people that knew him for two days or more detested. "Skii? As in like-"

Kel sighed. "It has NOTHING to do with snow." The sparrows cheeped. Neal threw up his hands. "It was just a question!"

Kel rolled her eyes. "I don't know how Yuki can stand you." _Actually, _she thought to herself._ Maybe I do._ She had had a crush on Neal even since her second year as a page, and though she hated to admit it, it hadn't really gone away.

Neal grinned. "Because I'm handsome and charming and witty." Kel snorted. "Yes, and I'm the Queen of Tortall."

Neal chose to ignore the comment. Instead, he pointed at the large rough cloth bag at Kel's feet. "And what's that?"

"_Bogu._"

"What the..."

"**Armour**. Practice armour for glaive practice. We practice with the wooden glaives, obviously. It's a lot easier to practice blocks and strikes when you can actually hit the target."

She pulled out different pieces of the _bogu_, showing Neal how each piece went on and how. "Next week, you can come out and be our dummy."

Neal raised one eyebrow quizzically. "_Da me_? I can be your...wrong?"

Kel bit her lip to stop herself laughing. "No! I was speaking English! Dummy! You put on the armour and we take turns whacking you!"

"I'd rather prefer not to, if it's all the same to you." He drawled.

She turned to him, her face completely innocent. "Yuki would appreciate it."

Neal let out a long, drawn out sigh. "If I must."

Kel cocked her head, staring at him. He noticed, and said, rather crossly "What?"

"What's wrong with you today?" she questioned him. "You're not acting like yourself. You're really grumpy. More so then usual." she added as in afterthought, pursing her lips in a fake show of deep thought, her face straight.

Neal sighed, and shrugged, not even hearing her jab. "It's nothing major. It's just that..." he stopped, and tactfully changed the subject. "How are you and Cleon doing?"

Kel stood, dragging the _bogu_ bag back to its place beside her _naginata. _Her back turned to him, she said slowly and carefully, "We're not together anymore. He has to wed that rich noblewoman, remember. Besides..." She ran her fingers through her hair, turning to meet his gaze. "I don't know...I think I got over him...while we were together. Actually it's a relief to be rid of him, to tell the truth." She glared at him, "Don't go telling anyone I said that."

Nealan of Queenscove put up his hands innocently. "Me?"

Kel calmly walked over to him, and with her best Yamani gaze on, shoved him off her bed. Neal yelped as he fell to the floor with a crash. "What was that for?" he questioned her indignantly, rising. "For being born." Kel replied, keeping her face straight. "Now get out of my room, I need my rest. Practice your Yamani. And don't forget to wake up at dawn. That's when the Naginata starts!" She began to push him towards the doorway.

"DAWN?!?!? Are you seriously asking that I wake up that early?" He demanded when he was just outside her door.

"Yep." Kel replied grinning, and with that, slammed the door in his face.

Turning to put her back against the solid oak, she slid down it. _Oh Goddess, I still like him. _She scrubbed her face with her sleeve. _Why did he have to come to ME asking for help with Yuki?_ She could hear Neal curse as he walked down the hall. Most of what he said was mumbled, though Kel could distinctly hear the word 'Dawn' repeated several times as the testy Queenscove squire made his way to his rooms. _I have to help him. He's my best friend._ _Why does life always have to be so tough?_

Neal yawned, trying to keep his bleary eyes open and not fall asleep on the wooden bench he was sitting on. He had come to the practice courts at dawn, like Kel had told him to, and **nobody was there.**

Had she pulled a trick on him? No, that didn't seem like something she would do...would she? She had been acting pretty nice and cheerful lately, but you could never tell with Kel. She only showed her true emotions when she wanted to, or in the rare cases that her feelings were so strong that she couldn't keep them hidden, try as she may.

"_Hai!"_

Slowly, women began filing into the courtyard. Each seemed to be wearing baggy pleated pants, with a white top, the neckline very much like a kimono, tucked under them. They wore an odd sort of armour..._bogu_, Neal remembered, which protected the wearers hands, shins, stomach, neck, and head. With the head armour on, it was impossible to see the person's face, even though the front was covered with a grate. In each woman's gloved hand was an upright practice _naginata, _the 'blade' made of bamboo, the staff made of oak. They all lined up, with one person standing in front of them, obviously the teacher.

"_Jakuza!" _She cried. By the voice, Neal supposed it was Shinkokami. He studied each of the armoured women in turn, wondering which one was Kel.

They all knelt gracefully, placing the _naginata_ beside them. "_Shoman-ne...rei!"_ Shinkokami ordered, swivelling around to face the same way as the others. They all bowed. The Yamani princess turned back to face her students. "_Rei!" _They bowed again. At another Yamani command, they all picked up their glaives and stood.

"_Judan-ne kamai!_" As one, the women all brought their glaive down, point facing forward, and turned sideways so they could hold it with both armour-covered hands.

"_Joguburi. Hajime._"

They each began to swing their _naginata_ up and down in a smooth ark. Neal recognised it as a warm up that Kel did often. He yawned. Who knew that this would be so **boring**? He wasn't picking up ANY of the Yamani, except _rei, _which meant bow, and _hajime, _which meant to start.

They group proceeded through several other similar warm ups, and then stopped when Shinkokami said clearly, "_Yame!"_

_That must mean stop. _Neal realized. _Maybe they're going to do something more interesting._

Shinkokami went over to a farther side of the court, picked up something off the ground, and came back. She was bearing two flags, one white, one red.

"Thayet-_san, _Haname_-san_." She called out. Two women stepped out from among the others to stand facing each other in front of the Yamani princess, one being the Queen of Tortall, the other Shinkokami's maid.

"_Rei_!" They bowed, and lowered their _naginata_ to face each other, the bamboo 'blades' touching.

"_Hajime!_"

Automatically the two began to test each other, shifting their glaives slightly, trying to make the other think that they were about to attack. One women was a little less skilled then the other. _That's probably Queen Thayet. _Neal supposed. _She hasn't been practicing her whole life. _

The other woman suddenly swung her _naginata _up in an ark and brought it down on the Queen's armoured head, at the same time letting out a screech-cry. "_Meeeeeen!!!!"_

The Queen responded with a similar hit, though not as powerful, on Haname's head. "_Meeen!!"_

Shinkokami, obviously the judge, lifted up the red flag. Haname's flag. The point was given to Haname because her strike had more power and spirit in it.

The two continued to fight. One would strike, while they other would block. Thayet went into the stance where the naginata was backwards, pausing for a second to long. Haname took advantage of Thayet's mistake and struck the Queen's shin. "_Suneeee!!!!!!!!" _Shinkokami lifted up the red flag.Haname brought up her glaive to block the Queen's stomach attack, pushed the naginata aside, and once again, struck Thayet's head, crying "_Meeeeeeeen!!!!!!"_

Shinkokami lifted up the red flag, then announced something in Yamani. The two women bowed, and left the center.

Neal was paying complete attention now. _This is a bit better. _He thought. _**I** wouldn't mind learning how to do that! I wonder how Kel fights. Or Yuki._ All his thoughts of sleep were forgotten. The Queen-to-be of Tortall was about to announce the next match.

"Yukimi-_san, _Keladry-_san._"

Neal's winter-green eyes widened. _What?!? They're fighting...each other?!? _

_Of course it must have happened before. _The more reasonable part of his brain reasoned, drawling. _I mean, they train together all the time._

_Yeah, but..._ The emotional side replied. _How come...I don't know whom I want to win?_

_Because..._

Neal knew what thought was coming, and it was one he had been fighting to submerge for weeks. _Shut up! Just shut up! _There was a pause. _Are the fights always this tense? _Sure enough there was tension in the air. The two faced each other, the difference in their heights obvious.

_At least we can tell which one's which. _The reasonable one remarked.

Something seemed to occur to Neal then. _Why am I conversing with myself?_

Shaking himself out of it, Neal watched the two women as they bowed, and settled into ready stance. Both were tense, almost to the point of anger, and were ready to fight. It seemed to Neal that both of their eyes flickered to him before they focused on their opponent. _Of course, I could be wrong. I can't see their faces. It's just...a feeling._

Shinkokami opened her mouth to speak, and both combatants tensed even more, if that was possible.

"_Hajime_."

Wahooo! That's the first chapter over with. I always find them the hardest. Blah. Anyway, the 'Yamani' in this (Japanese) might be a little off in how I spelled it. I just did it in the way it sounds.

Was it overly confusing?

Review please!

Josie


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